Sorry to Harsh Your Friday Mellow

Earlier this week, the NYT ran a powerful three-part series on civil commitment of sex offenders. (Parts 1, 2, and 3 are here, here, and here, respectively.) I note with interest that none of the series' three parts made it onto the list of most emailed articles in the last seven days. I know the subject makes people uncomfortable; but you'd think that people would have at least some interest in how 2,700 fellow Americans came to be locked away indefinitely as part of a program that costs them more than eight times what it does to lock someone up in regular prisons, even if they are rapists and pedophiles.

Anyway, I kept meaning to point you to the series, which was one of the most interesting -- and frustrating -- I've read in a long while. I don't know what to do about sex offenders. But I know from reading the articles in the series (and from research I did in law school) that who gets classified as a "sex offender" runs the gamut from a flasher to the serial molester of little kids; that there is disagreement in the psychiatric community about whether or not treatment (which is allegedly the point of civil commitment) actually works; and that the facilities where these men are confined are expensive, poorly operated, and, it seems, out of control.

Just read the articles.

Oh, and if you're wondering about things like ex post facto violations, double jeopardy, or other pesky Constitutional concepts as they relate to civil commitment, you can read the Supreme Court opinion that made civil commitment for sex offenders Constitutional. The (mordant) punchline of the opinion is its author.